Monthly Archives: May 2009

Of little girls and liberal goals: daddies, daughters, and left-wing politics

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There’s been a lot of research done over the years on the impact that becoming a parent has on one’s political preference. The common wisdom has generally been that becoming a parent, particularly to a daughter or daughters, would push that parent rightward in his or her politics. Indeed, back in my own youth, I heard some variation on this line from several sources: “What’s the definition of a conservative? A former liberal with a teenage daughter.” It “sounded” right, and not being a parent (but being quite left-wing), I was prepared, however reluctantly, to believe it might be so.

My student Hilary sends me a link, however, to this post at the wonderful FiveThirtyEight: Having Daughters Rather than Sons Makes You More Liberal. 538 provides a link to a PDF file of a forthcoming paper which summarizes a number of recent studies, all of which indicate that the presence of daughters in father’s lives (more so than in mother’s) tends to move men leftwards. This trend is true in both the UK and the USA (the two nations studied), and true both for ordinary voters as well as for politicians. For example, the study cites the work of economist Ebonya Washington:

By collecting data on the voting records of US congressmen, Washington… provides persuasive evidence that congressmen with female children
tend to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues such as teen access to
contraceptives. (She also) argues for a wider result, namely,
that the congressmen vote more liberally on a range of issues such as working families
flexibility and tax-free education. Her data — compiled partly but not wholly
from voting record scores compiled by the three interest groups of the National Organization of Women, the American Association of University Women, and the
National Right to Life Coalition — cover a cross-section of 828 members of four
congresses of the US House of Representatives for the years 1997 to 2004. As her
final sentence puts it: “Not only should we consider the influence that parents have on
children’s behavior, but we should acknowledge that influence may flow from child to
parent”.

Read the whole study, the comments at 538, and check out the fun graphs and charts. A statistician’s delight!

I argued in March that “strong public institutions which offer alternatives to traditional family structures and allow for maximum personal autonomy and responsible self-expression are a key way to promote a feminist vision on a macro-economic level.” That was and is my view, but it’s interesting to see that having daughters seems to lead other men (politicians and ordinary voters alike) towards that same position. It’s not the case that those who have girls are automatically more liberal; it’s difficult to argue that on most issues, Dick Cheney was somehow made more progressive by having two daughters and no sons! One shudders to think how much more extreme he might have been had he had “Larry” and “Mark” instead of Liz and Mary. (It’s worth noting that his nuanced and moderate position on gay marriage, rare for a right-wing Republican, was certainly influenced by having a lesbian daughter.) Continue reading →

Pro-life in private, pro-choice in the voting booth: UPDATED

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I posted about Obama, abortion, and irreconcilables yesterday. As coincidence would have it, a major anti-abortion campaign has descended on Pasadena City College this week. At strategic points around campus, activists have erected massive billboards depicting the fetus at various stages of prenatal development. Several dozen young people, clean-cut and mostly white, clad in shorts and t-shirts, are manning the displays with literature and a willingness to talk. Yesterday, these huge set-ups attracted large crowds, drawn to the brightly colored, highly controversial images. As I walked on to campus this morning, the displays were being erected once more; this is presumably part of a week-long campaign.

(UPDATE: I’ve learned that our visitors this week come from the Wichita, Kansas outfit called Justice for All. Their website — with exact reproductions of the images they have on campus this week – is here. Warning: May be triggering for many. A visit to the JFA site makes clear they are tied to conservative Protestant evangelicalism, advocating abstinence until marriage. JFA is closely linked with Stand To Reason, the Southern California apologetics group; STR’s statement of faith is here. JFA has been sued before over their displays, and a lawsuit is ongoing in Texas after a display at UT Austin.)

This often happens this time of year. Christian colleges and universities that finish their terms in early May free up committed young activists to descend on public colleges and universities that won’t finish up until June. What a fine thing it must be to be able to tell one’s friends that one is spending the summer campaigning and witnessing for life, bringing the “truth about abortion” to the ignorant, the misled, and the Great Unsaved! I’m a bit snarky, but also empathetic. I’ve been part of similar marches and campaigns, and unlike most people, have adult experience with being on both sides of the abortion issue. (Pro-choice, pro-life, and pro-choice once more.) I know how easy it is to move from passionate conviction to righteous indignation to dehumanization of one’s opponents.

On a day like today, I have no interest in wading out onto the quad to engage one-one-one with these folks. My main concern is for the emotional welfare of my students, particularly those who have had abortions. (I can think of four young women currently on this campus who have confided in me that they have made that particular choice. I’m under no illusion that everyone who has had an abortion shares the story with me, and as a result, can only assume that a substantial percentage of my students have terminated a pregnancy.) The activists have set up their displays in such a way that it is difficult to enter or exit our main buildings without seeing these graphic and troubling images; I am eager to make myself available (and I know I speak for my feminist colleagues when I say that they are also available) to students who want to process through their feelings.

If I were to engage with the activists, I wouldn’t debate the issue of when life begins. The answer to that question is so weighted with theological conviction and emotional intuition that the chances of achieving a happy universal consensus are nil. (See yesterday’s post about the inevitabilty of irreconcilables.) Rather, I’d prefer to focus solely on policy. What laws do they want changed? What punishments would be appropriate for women who seek abortion? What punishments would be appropriate for doctors who provide abortion? What expectations do these activists have that ending legal abortion will also end illicit pregnancy terminations?

President Obama rightly pointed out that most Americans have contradictory views. Many Americans, an increasing number, are “pro-life.” The anti-abortion movement is winning the battle to convince folks that a fetus is a human being. But they aren’t winning elections; just last fall, pro-life propositions were resoundingly defeated in Colorado, South Dakota, and in California. The reason for this apparent disconnect is that a great many people find abortion abhorrent, but are reluctant to ban the procedure in all instances. Most Americans can imagine their own daughters or little sisters getting raped, after all; few Americans would want to force a woman to carry such a pregnancy to term.

So the question I would have for my pro-life friends is about policy. What specific policy recommendations do you call for? If doctors continue to perform abortions once it has been made illegal, what charges do you intend to bring against them? What crime do you think a woman ought to be charged with if she seeks an abortion? If you believe that women are “victims” of abortion, do you see them as emotional children who cannot be held accountable for their actions? Do you think penalties should be enhanced for women who seek more than one abortion over the course of their lifetimes?

The issue of when life begins is, I think, more or less a moot point. Even if we concede (and I do not concede this) that life begins at conception, what specific policies and coercive tactics ought to be adopted to protect that embryonic life? In the public square, those of us who hold strong views need to bring tangible policy solutions to the table. And this, of course, is where the pro-life movement loses traction with the American people. 51% of Americans may describe themselves as pro-life, but that doesn’t mean 51% of Americans want abortion to be outlawed, or want clinic workers charged with murder. Americans, in other words, seem to be increasingly pro-life in their private moral views and resolutely pro-choice in terms of their views on public policy. (This explains why parental notification initiatives have failed three times in California, despite the fact that most Californians think teens should talk to their parents before seeking an abortion.) We lean increasingly to the right philosophically, but increasingly left in terms of practicalities.

But today, my thoughts are not about politics or philosophy. My thoughts are with the young women on this campus (statistically, on a campus with more than 15,000 women, there are thousands who are have had or will have an abortion) who will come face to face with these graphic displays today. My prayers are for them, my office door (as I told my women’s studies class this morning) is open to them. And I’m choosing to remain cheerfully civil to those whose views are different from my own.

Barack Obama, Isaiah Berlin, and the wisdom of honoring irreconcilables

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We were in the Bay Area until yesterday afternoon, and stayed at our host’s home in San Francisco long enough to catch President Obama’s remarkable — and controversial — commencement address at Notre Dame.

I have not hesitated to be critical of the new president when I think criticism is warranted; his refusal to embrace the cause of marriage equality, and his administration’s reluctance to use its powers to protect grey wolves and polar bears have been serious disappointments. But it is in the nature of leaders to disappoint their most ardent followers, and I accept that. It is in the light of these recent disappointments that I watched Obama give his speech to the Notre Dame community, and I was as impressed as ever with his seriousness, his thoughtfulness, and his commitment to changing the tone of contemporary discourse.

The full transcript of the address is here. There is much within his talk that others are discussing, but I wanted to note my favorite bit. Referencing our long and seemingly never-ending public fights over abortion and other divisive social issues (such as same-sex marriage) the president said:

Now, understand — understand, Class of 2009, I do not suggest that the debate surrounding abortion can or should go away. Because no matter how much we may want to fudge it — indeed, while we know that the views of most Americans on the subject are complex and even contradictory — the fact is that at some level, the views of the two camps are irreconcilable. Each side will continue to make its case to the public with passion and conviction. But surely we can do so without reducing those with differing views to caricature.

Bold emphasis mine.

I liked that very much, largely because most politicians on left and right (and, I confess, this blogger) tend towards a crude but honest triumphalism. We sing “We Shall Overcome”, and quote (or misquote) Dr. King’s line about the long arc of history curving towards justice. In the animal rights world, many of us are confident that we will reach a point where eating the flesh of other sentient beings is as abhorrent as eating the flesh of our own children. My pro-life friends speak constantly of a coming moral awakening; my gay activist friends expect — within their lifetimes — to see all opposition to same-sex marriage fade away. To some extent, staying involved in any kind of activism requires this faith that your cause will triumph someday. Who among us — across the political spectrum — doesn’t thrill to King’s sentiment in that final speech of his in Memphis, when he tells us he has seen the promised land from the mountaintop? Like MLK, many of us know (or fear, or suspect) that the promised land (the end of abortion, universal acceptance of gay marriage, the end of animal agriculture) will not be reached in our lifetimes. But the bittersweet sense that we, like Moses, will not live to enter what has so long been sought often gives rise to sweeping denunciations of those who are impeding the path of progress. And it was to that triumphalist worldview that President Obama so capably addressed himself yesterday. Continue reading →

And off again…

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I’m in hiring interviews all day today, and off to Northern California tomorrow — speaking at a small conference in Oakland (at the Oakland Museum) on Thursday. No posting until next Monday. I’ll try to moderate things as best I can.

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Of Popes and Playboys and Pueri Aeterni: Some thoughts on Hugh Hefner and the theology of the body

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Through Dawn Eden’s blog, I found two interesting links: the first to a Nightline story about Christopher West, a popular evangelist for the “theology of the body” teaching now sweeping the church; the second, to a post by Father Angelo Geiger in response to West’s television appearance. The headline out of West was his comparison of Hugh Hefner to John Paul II, and this:

“I love Hugh Hefner,” said West. “I really do. Why? Because I think I understand his ache. I think I understand his longing because I feel it myself. There is this yearning, this ache, this longing we all have for love, for union, for intimacy.”

Father Geiger is concerned, and explains why. I’d never visited his site before, and I appreciate some aspects of his post, particularly his willingness to proclaim that asking women to cover up is not the right solution to the problem of male objectification of women. The padre gets props for this:

…men are perfectly capable of controlling themselves. I think too much attention paid to controlling women’s fashions… just leads to a kind of negative preoccupation with sexuality that does err on the side of prudery.

Nicely put. But then the priest goes off the deep end:

A more exalted view of human sexuality is needed and a preoccupation with the sinful nature of inappropriate sexuality should be avoided, but in this age when men have been so feminized and have so often recoiled from duty and consoled themselves in soft and lazy sensuality, they do not need to be encouraged to think about sexuality more, they need to be encouraged to mortify themselves, to be men, to be soldiers for Christ…
Hefner has been sleeping with multiple partners for his whole career. His playmates are exactly that, and he has never grown up. The man, now in his eighties, is sleeping with women that are barely legal. Hefner is quoted as saying “The interesting thing is how one guy, through living out his own fantasies, is living out the fantasies of so many other people.” That’s the fact and those fantasies are concupiscence run wild and fueled by a soft and effemninate indiscipline and by a very sophisticated and gnostic rationalization. God forbid that the association of John Paul II and such a “playboy” should end by promoting a religious version of that effeminate gnosticism.

Bold emphases are mine, of course. Geiger has completely — and bizarrely — misread Hefner, both in his assertion that the permanently be-robed octogenarian is a gnostic, and that his sexual exploits are somehow evidence of effeminacy. (Most Christian gnostics were radical dualists, rejecting the idea that Christ had ever been incarnate and exhibiting a hostility to the way of the flesh.) Hefner’s life is, in many ways, wrapped up in a rejection of the Protestant work ethic (with which he was raised) and with the rigid straitjacket of American male adulthood, characterized by a strange blend of self-sacrifice and frantic acquisitiveness. For Hef, the title of the magazine gives it away: “Play, Boy!” The opposite of play, of course, is work; the opposite of boy, is not “girl” or “woman”, but “man.” Continue reading →

Dean Butler in “It’s All About Me”

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It’s Mother’s Day, my wife’s first. I’m on the floor of our nursery, my daughter asleep beside me on her playmat, the TV showing a soccer match. (Women’s Professional Soccer; never too early to make an impression on Heloise!)

This post is for the family and other interested parties: it’s a short review of my cousin Dean Butler’s performance last night in his one-man show, “It’s All About Me” at Sterling’s Upstairs at Vitello’s in Studio City. Dean, my dear first cousin and fellow Bay Area transplant to Los Angeles, is widely known for his television roles as Almanzo Wilder on “Little House on the Prairie”, Moondoggie on the “New Gidget”, and — to a younger audience — his brief appearances as Hank Summers in “Buffy the Vampire Slayer.” What’s less well known is that Dean’s background in musical theater goes back to high school, when he was perhaps the youngest and WASPiest Tevye ever to bring down the house in a production of “Fiddler on the Roof.” He’s also had several stints on and off Broadway in a wide variety of theatrical and musical productions.

Dean is now principal in Legacy Documentaries, and most of his work these days is behind the camera. But his love for musical theater and the stage is still in his blood, and that passion led him to last night’s terrific show. Working with a piano and an upright bass for musical accompaniment, Dean offered just over an hour of music and light comedy, tracing his own career with charm and self-deprecating humor. From “If I Were a Rich Man” from the aforementioned Fiddler, to a medley from “West Side Story” (he played Tony in the Japanese touring production) to country standards from Collin Raye and Kenny Rogers, Dean charmed — and at times, moved — the audience of just about a hundred happy and enchanted diners. Two highlights stood out: a duet with former Gidget star Caryn Richman on “Summer Nights” (from Grease) and a powerful, stirring number from the new Little House: the Musical.

Dean offered a number of comical, perfectly timed anecdotes about his years in the “business”, many of which had the audience in stitches of laughter. Some were familiar to his loved ones; others were new and surprising. Entertainment is a capricious business, and without the ability to laugh at the setbacks and the rejections which are part and parcel of the life that he and so many others lead in this town, it’s hard to delight in the rare but glorious triumphs that come along. Dean has had his triumphs and his setbacks, and along the way he’s accumulated many wonderful stories — and far more importantly, many wonderful friends — who have sustained, encouraged, and inspired him. Last night at Vitello’s the crowd was thick with many people who have known and adored Dean, and filled with people who don’t — yet — know him well. And you didn’t need to know him or his story to delight in his perfectly-paced, masterfully produced, and immensely enjoyable show.

For my wife and I, it was our first date night “out without the baby”, who waited at home with my mother-in-law. What a perfect evening for this new milestone in our life as parents. I’m very proud of my cousin, and eager to see what the next chapter in his long and unfolding career will hold.

More on desire, ranking, and body anxiety: some less organized thoughts

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Two posts responding to Monday’s post about men and feeling desired: Feeling Hot or Not by Lynn Gazis-Sax and Wanted Bodies, by David Schraub. (UPDATE: Here’s Sungold’s post as well.) I’m grateful for all the comments here, which I think have been helpful.

Second Update: A response from Figleaf.

I can’t stress enough that nothing I wrote was intended to suggest that it ought to be women’s job to praise men more frequently for their physical desirability. As several of the commenters pointed out, women have good reason to fear significant negative repercussions for vocalizing desire. I don’t think casually subjecting strangers to a lusful gaze is ever a good idea, of course, but it’s important to remind ourselves that the consequences of doing so are generally much more perilous for women. Our narratives about rape, for example, make it clear that the only women who are “true victims” are those who have no sexual agency, who expressed no desire. A woman who makes clear that she’s turned on, or at least drawn to, some aspect of men’s bodies (rather than, say, men’s wit or wealth or charm or kindness) risks being “slut-shamed” — and worse, she risks the suggestion that she’s “asking” to be assaulted. Bottom line: we have a perverse cultural sense that “a horny woman can’t be raped”.

Both men and women are raised around male narratives of desire. Most of us grow up hearing that all men are turned on by similar things. Where we do allow for variation, we break men down (I remember learning this when I was about eleven) into “boob men”, “butt men” and “leg men.” The depressing implication is that the desire is for body parts, not whole people. A “boob man”, or so I was told by older boys in junior high school, “needed” to be with a woman who had large breasts — and it was rational for such a man to make sexual and relationship decisions accordingly. The discourse taught me that not only was male desire intensely strong, it was also unchangeable; a boob man couldn’t overcome his obsession even with the most heroic efforts. Dating an otherwise perfect woman with an A cup was useless, almost unfair.

When I was still in junior high school, older boys taught me to rank girls on various attributes (“face” = 8, “body” = 5, that sort of sad thing.) Homosociality is powerful; as so many generations of boys discover, the real pleasure of these “ranking” conversations lies in two things: the false sense of power over women that the process seems to give, and the sense of male cameraderie that the shared discussion engenders. Part of my journey to justice as an adult man has been unlearning that training to “rank” women; part of my men’s work has been learning how to create bonds with other men without relying on either sports or the objectification of women as homosocial glue. And of course, a big part of the work is doing what I can to call other men out on the “ranking” when I hear it happening. Continue reading →

Shame and scandal: an evangelical reflection on the torture poll

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I like polls. I follow polls. Last year, like millions of Americans, I was almost obsessed with polls, and developed a massive man-crush on Nate Silver of the top-notch polling site, FiveThirtyEight. I like it when polls tell me things I suspect are true, or want to be true, such as the recent poll from ABC demonstrating that a narrow plurality of Americans support marriage equality.

But I have never been as distressed by a poll as I was by the much-discussed, much-lamented one released last week by the Pew Forum. The Religious Dimensions of the Torture Debate made it very clear that church-going Christians in general, and white evangelicals in particular, are much more inclined to see torture as at least sometimes both necessary and justified than are their secular counterparts. It wasn’t that I didn’t think that the poll could be true; indeed, I understand all too well the political and theological heresies which are rife in the American church and which encourage this abhorrent and biblically indefensible notion to flourish. (Is Mel Gibson’s snuff film about our Savior to blame? Is it that most folks completely misunderstand — and many pastors misrepresent — atonement theory?) It’s that on an emotional level, I didn’t want it to be true.

As a self-described progressive evangelical, my views on many issues diverge from most who describe themselves as “deeply religious” or “born-again.” I support marriage equality for all; I am prayerfully, at times reluctantly, firmly pro-choice. I believe that wise stewardship over creation means understanding that all of creation — and not merely human beings — are endowed by their Creator with inalienable rights. My veganism and my feminism, far from existing uneasily alongside my Christian faith, are indeed rooted in my own understanding of Jesus and His call upon my heart. I expect to have arguments about sexual ethics with my more conservative fellow Christians. I expect to engage in the old “complemetarian versus egalitarian” debate about gender roles. But I never seriously expected to need to explain to a fellow Christian that torturing another human being was fundamentally incompatible with our faith.

(Before going further, let me recommend Mercer University professor and Christian ethicist David Gushee’s very fine post about the poll.) Continue reading →

Marilyn French, 1929-2009: UPDATED

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The great Marilyn French has died at 79. Many appreciations are appearing this week, see here for more.

Marilyn French is best known for her wonderful — if now dated — The Women’s Room. It’s perhaps the most important novel to come out of what is commonly known as Second Wave Feminism, and it remains a vital, fascinating, at times infuriating text. In 1986, when I was first beginning to think about doing women’s studies and feminist work, a friend of mine recommended the book to me. “Read it”, she said, “and tell me what you think.” I read the book the fall semester of my sophomore year, and was galvanized by it. Much has been made in the obituaries of French’s anger, and there’s little doubt that in many respects “The Women’s Room” is an angry novel. But righteous anger in the face of blind privilege, reckless entitlement, and crushing social norms is no vice — and I found French’s work to be a powerful and damning indictment. At 19, I recognized aspects of myself in some of her less sympathetic male characters — and in no small way, the book contributed to the beginning of my intellectual journey to (at least attempt to) become a different sort of man.

I also loved her Beyond Power, now out of print. One of the first organized discussions of feminism in which I ever participated (if we don’t count sitting quietly in the room while my mother hosted meetings of the League of Women Voters) came in late ’86, and the topic was French’s then brand-new and dazzling meditation on patriarchy, resistance, and sexuality over the entire course of human history. Most of my younger feminist colleagues who’ve read the book tend to roll eyes or snort derisively when I talk almost worshipfully of French; for some, she’s the very epitome of a certain kind of privileged Second Waver, the sort whose feminism is often alienating to those born long after Watergate. But it’s still on my shelf, and it’s still a terrific text. It’s influenced more than a little of my teaching.

I confess that “The Women’s Room” and “Beyond Power” are the only two Marilyn French works I’ve read. But like most of the books which have served me well, I take great pleasure in re-reading them. I’ll track down some of her more recent novels soon, and urge those who have never read her work to start with her most important and influential offerings.

UPDATE: Jha has a great tribute here.